Posts from January 2008

January 25, 2008

There's a lack of art/artist info on Wikipedia, and we're
often too busy to find the time to contribute. So, we're setting aside
one day where a crew of people collectively drop serious knowledge into
wikipedia about art.

Not sure I'll be able to make it, but if someone wants to beef up the MTAA entry perhaps we can wash your back too :-)

This "atomic explosion" seen on Czech television was a prank by the art collective Ztohoven. Above, three Ztohovenites.

Then came the nuclear blast.

Across the Krkonose Mountains,
or so it appeared, a white flash was followed by the spectacle of a
rising mushroom cloud. A Web address at the bottom of the screen said Ztohoven.com.

Ztohoven,
to no one's great surprise, turned out to be a collective of young
artists and friends who had previously tinkered with a giant neon
sculpture of a heart high atop Prague Castle, and managed (during a
single night, no less) to insert announcements for an art opening
inside all 750 lighted advertising boxes in the city's subway system.

Now
half a dozen members of the group face up to three years in jail or a
fine or both, charged with scaremongering and attempted scaremongering.
The trial is set for March. Some Czechs expressed outrage over
Ztohoven's action, naturally, but in general it drew a mild, tolerant,
even amused public response, in contrast to how terrorism-related
pranks, or what might seem like them, have been widely greeted
elsewhere. The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition
of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.

Not
long ago a film that became a local hit, "Czech Dream," documented a
boondoggle by two young Czech filmmakers, who enlisted advertisers and
publicists to devise a marketing scheme for a nonexistent supermarket.
The movie’s goal, like Ztohoven's, was to wag the dog: lampoon media
manipulation and public gullibility. In the trailer hundreds of
shoppers swarm a weedy field, rushing toward what they believe to be
the store, which turns out to be a painted backdrop. The mushroom
cloud, in a sense, upped the ante on the supermarket.

To hack
into the CT2 broadcast, Ztohoven simply switched cables on an unmanned,
remote camera at a limestone quarry in the mountains, which the artists
had scouted three years earlier. Then they piped in their video. The
name Ztohoven makes a pun in Czech that means both "out of it" and an
obscenity. Rightly, the group presumed this would tip off viewers that
the explosion was fake, in case they hadn't already guessed it from the
cheesy special effects.

Contrary to what the British press
reported, no "War of the Worlds" panic ensued. So far as anyone can
tell, not a single sleepy-eyed Czech viewer was frightened by the
stunt, their lack of fear, the state attorney said, not being the
explanation for the curious charge of "attempted" scaremongering. (The
charge is a Czech legal fine point.)

As for exactly who the
group's members are, that remains something of a mystery, which
Ztohoven theatrically guards. Even the state prosecutor said over the
phone the other day it was private information until the trial.
Nevertheless three members of the group -- two amiable ringleaders and a
quiet, sweet-faced 26-year-old who looked as if he were 12 -- agreed to
meet at an empty cafe over coffee and Coke. They declined to give their
names.

But they brought a film crew.

Turns out, Ztohoven
includes no women. "That’s the problem of radicalism," sighed the
threesome's 33-year-old elder statesman, who called himself Roman Tyc.
(The pun works in English.) "To get together for pranks is also more
difficult now that we're getting into our 30s."

His associate, in
a pastel crewneck sweater, who gave his name as Zdenek Dostal, and whom
the highly voluble Roman had a tendency to talk over, said the action
on Czech Television, which Ztohoven titled "Media Reality," was “not
meant to be threatening but to land softly on the public consciousness
so that people won’t let themselves be brainwashed."

The artists
just wanted to startle viewers "from their lethargy," piped in the
quietest member of the trio, Mira Slava (punningly, "peace and fame").
All three Ztohovenites recoiled at a description of an art project some
years back entailing fake bombs left in a New York subway station,
which briefly shut part of the city down.

Nothing really
happened at all here, initially, anyway. Ladislav Sticha, the tall
spokesman for Czech Television, told me that the show's audience was "miniature" — presumably he meant small in number. Only a few people,
among them perplexed hikers checking the weather before setting out for
a Sunday stroll, called or sent e-mail messages to inquire.

But
then Czech Television broadcast Ztohoven's handiwork hour after hour on
its numerous news programs, and the video soon landed on YouTube. By
the next day all Europe knew about it.

"It's not that we would
not have supported this kind of art, if they had come to us," Mr.
Sticha added, somewhat abashed that, because Czech Television filed a
complaint for breach of property, the affair ended up in court.

Hardly
anyone here seems to want Ztohoven to receive more than a legal slap on
the wrist, if that. Neither have fellow artists protested the trial in
the streets, nor made a freedom of speech issue out of it. A literary
weekly even mildly took Ztohoven to task for being a little too hungry
for media attention.

On the other hand, the National Gallery in
Prague last month awarded the group a prize. Milan Knizak, the National
Gallery's white-haired, pony-tailed director, himself an artist and
one-time Czech Actionist, explained that the award was not a statement
about the court case but given for the "directness" of "Media Reality." [read on...]

Coelho's view is that letting people swap digital copies of his
books for free increases sales. In a keynote speech (embedded below) at
the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich he talked
about how uploading the Russian translation of "The Alchemist" made his
sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a
million and more. He said:

In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was
puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next
year we were over 100,000. […]

I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the
possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or
not. […]

So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.

He's convinced — and rightly so — that letting people download free
copies of his books helps sales. For him the problem is getting around
copyright laws that require him to get the permission of his
translators if he wants to share copies of his books in other languages.

So is Coelho just seeding torrents of his books? That's just the
beginning. He took it one step further and, as quoted above, set up a
Wordpress blog, Pirate Coelho,
where he posts links to free copies of his books on filesharing
networks, FTP sites, and so on. He says it had a direct impact on sales:

Believe it or not, the sales of the book increased a lot thanks to the Pirate Coelho site…

In his speech he talks about how the Internet is changing language
and books, and how online "piracy" and BitTorrent have helped him not
only be more widely read, but also sell more books! It's a must watch.

NEW YORK—The Chelsea Art Museum is facing
foreclosure after a failed attempt to sell its "air rights" (rights to
use and develop the empty space above the property), the New York Post reports. In 2006, museum founder Dorothea Keeser made a deal with developer Alf Naman
to sell Naman 40,000 square feet of air rights for $8.5 million. Keeser
planned to use the proceeds to pay off a $5.8 million mortgage due for
the museum and minor renovations. As part of the deal, the museum was
to keep 5,000 square feet of air rights, which it planned to use to
create a roof garden, cafe, and apartments for an artist-in-residence
program. A closing was scheduled for April 30, 2006, but Naman, who
paid an $800,000 deposit, backed out of the deal. Since then, the
museum and Naman have been locked in a court battle that includes a $20
million lawsuit from Naman claiming Keeser never came to the closing.
In the meantime, Keeser said that she has not been able to repay the
mortgage, the loan is in default, and she has paid $2.4 million extra
in added interest, fees, and expenses. The bank launched a foreclosure
proceeding in October. Lawyers were in court last week trying to sort
out the mess."We are in an extended crisis," Keeser told the Post.